“Guy named Kent Wayne,” I grunt.The constrainment suit instantiates my being into a humanoid figure.“Next great American author.”

“Watch out for Grammar Nazis.”

“Always.”

I open an acausal hatch, linking my realm with Kent’s, and plunge into the bounds of the planet called Earth, circa 2018.

DOWN ON EARTH:

After rocketing through a chain of mandala-lined tunnels, I materialize in a dirty hovel on the western edge of San Francisco.My upper lip curls in distaste as I take in the mounds of empty pizza boxes and giant pyramids formed from half-drunk code red mountain dew cans.Kent Wayne is sound asleep on a cum-stained futon, snoring loudly.His gigantic wiener is dangling a few inches above his ankles, snoring just as loudly—if not louder—than him.

Disgusting.The things I have to do in the name of Creativity.

Suddenly, I stiffen. A slinking shadow of a man is crouching behind the futon, his face inches away from Kent’s dome.His skinny, testosterone-deprived arms are elbow-deep in the writer’s sixth chakra.

“9Tek the Muse,” he sneers, locking eyes with me over Kent’s forehead.“This one is MINE.His fingers and keyboard will give birth to untold numbers of smarmy essays and soul-deadened poems. His neuro-psychic circuitry is almost completely rewired, so do yourself a favor and fuck off back to Elysium.”

“So he won’t be the next Hemingway,” I retort.“But there’s still a piece of him that you haven’t yet touched.”

Then I reach into Kent’s psyche and open his mind to the as-of-yet-unwritten science fiction epic called Echo, activating its reality distortion powers.Magic flash.

Kent spasms on the bed as eldritch currents jump and spark across his flesh.After a brief but intense storm of energy—both me and Grammar Nazi Prime turn away and shield our eyes—the author collapses back onto his mattress, hugging his beloved wiener to his chest like a smelly body pillow.

I throw a triumphant grin at Grammar Nazi Prime.“He won’t write paradigm-shifting literature, but I was able to salvage the core of him; now he’ll write about robots, mind-to-mind combat, and barbarian kings trading bodies with psychopathic teen queens.”My grin widens.“And, of course, he’ll write about his penis.”

“No,” Grammar Nazi Prime whispers.“THAT’S EVEN WORSE!”He clutches at the air with both hands and howls in impotent fury.As his scream crescendoes, he vanishes into a flutter of bats.

Is your psyche trapped in an imaginal conflict between the forces of “cheer-like-a-kid-watching-Star-Wars-in-a-1979-theater” and “soul-deadening grammar-compliant bullshit which mistakes smarmy for funny?”Never fear! Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here: Vol. 1 on Kindle. Vol. 2 on Kindle here: Vol.2 on Kindle Vol. 3 on Kindle here: Vol. 3 on Kindle Vol.4 on Kindle here: Vol. 4 on Kindle Echo Omnibus here: Echo Omnibus Echo Vol. 1 & 2 Combined Edition here: Combined Edition If you wanna hear me babble on about anything and everything, and strain my FREAKIN’ BRAIN, then here’s a link to my podcast: Strained Brains! It is on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play! Please give it a listen and a five-star review! Here’s the miscellaneous gear that I use to try and become an uber-human: Optimization, and last but not least, my buddy Jumar Balacy has made a supercool microsite at kentwaynebrain.com! Go check out his computer-based wizardry 🙂 🙂 😀

Hold on! I just got approved to be an Amazon affiliate! If you’re going to buy ANY product from Amazon, and you’d like to support my efforts for absolutely free, then simply click on one of the Echo links I’ve provided—they’ll send you to Echo’s Amazon page—and THEN buy whatever product you wish. Amazon gives me a small referral fee each time this happens! In this manner you can support my books, musings, podcast, zany ads, or my adventures along the noble path known as The Way of The Man Child WITHOUT spending any more money than you were already going to! Should you do this, I vow to send you a silent blessing, causing your genitals to adopt the optimum size, shape, smell, and death-ray attachment of choice that paralyzes your enemies with fear and envy! Entire worlds will bow before your nether parts! 😲💪 😜

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “Echo: A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel”

I gotta tell you man, I can feel your joy when I read what you’ve written. I can feel the muse-ichal energy flowing from whatever dimension it dwells in, through your brain and fingertips, into my eyeballs and brain and eventually even my soul. I really do enjoy it, I see the same joy that I find when I’ve written something good. The way you play with words, with their meanings and sounds and how they interact with each other, it truly captures the way I feel when I create. Keep creating content man, more and more people will continue to consume and enjoy, and even benefit from it. Incidentally, if you ever need anything proofread or edited I’d be more than willing to assist, and if you’d like me to shut up and fuck off I’ll happily oblige as well. Thank you for your work so far, take it easy man.

Hey thanks so much for the kind words, Bryce! These ads are my opportunity to think less about themes and buildups and structure and experiment mostly with visceral stuff. As far as proofreading or editing, I probably won’t take you up on it. Not because I’m precious about my work, but because 95% of my tone is created in the edit, haha! I put Echo 4 through over twenty drafts before I finally released it. Some of my stuff I’ve looked at over thirty times before deeming it ready for someone else to read. 🙂